In the field of configuration management, Configuration Items (CIs) are defined as an aggregation of hardware, software or any other tangible asset that supports or satisfies an end use function directly affiliated to the continuity of a business. The CIs are all inter-related in support of a given business. Applications run on servers, which are housed in buildings that are maintained by particular processes, and so forth. They all support a smooth running business, improved services, or improvement in the business's bottom line. The current CA-CMDB (Configuration Management Database) Product used by Computer Associates, Inc. allows users to build and manage these inter-relationships. Users leverage the relationship information today graphically through a CMDB Visualizer. The Visualizer allows the user to see what CIs are related to other CIs and provide a categorization of that relationship.
Referring now in specific detail to the drawings, and particularly FIG. 1, there is illustrated an exemplary screenshot using Visualizer.
The problem is that today's products and models provide only basic relationship information. For example, referring to FIG. 1, the Visualizer graphically highlights the following relationships:
Printer 1→Connects to→Server 1
Server 1→Hosts→Accounts Payable Application
Accounts Payable Application→requires→Printer 1
Run Doc 4→Documents→Accounts Payable Application
Run Doc 5→Documents→Printer 1
Now imagine the complexity of trying to visualize the thousands of different relationships among configuration items that are critical to a business all at once. Many current products have basic filtering mechanisms to allow you to pick the relationship types you wish to view, or limit the set of CIs based on particular attributes, but none of them allow you to apply any automated business logic to what the end user sees. The end user sees only everything or a sub-set of everything based on the attributes of the configuration items.